Same with Rangs of Power, prequel to a (successful) franchise that visibly had zero blacks. Begging the question where did all these black dwarves and black elves go?
This is the thing about Rangz - there are black people in Middle-Earth. The Haradrim. But in the second age, Harad was called Umbar and the people of Umbar hadn't yet taken up with Sauron.
If you wanted a story about black people in Second Age Middle-Earth all you had to do was set it there. Could have been an interesting story, too, fall of an empire (of sorts) and the turn to evil, that's the kind of thing that needs a good scripting team to make work, but when it does work, it works pretty well. And I'm assuming that for a billion dollars Amazon could find a competent scriptwriter somewhere.
But no, what the RoP team were actually after was to colonise and deconstruct classic LotR, because that's the only way in which this makes sense. And just like Johnson's TLJ, the main expectation being subverted is that this would make anything like as much money as they wanted to see.
You also have established movies like Robin Hood with Kevin Kostner (and Morgan Freeman) where a black character from an area of the world, where the show doesn't take place, is part of the main cast.
Nothing would've stopped the RoP team to get 2-3 people from Umbar to be relevant characters. Make something up how they got there (and how they befriended other main characters) and why they are staying. Hell maybe let them have connections back to Umbar and when they need help 4-5 ships from Umbar arrive (with all black crews) to help out in a battle or something.
(I haven't watched RoP, so no clue if that would be viable)
Same with Rangs of Power, prequel to a (successful) franchise that visibly had zero blacks. Begging the question where did all these black dwarves and black elves go?
This is the thing about Rangz - there are black people in Middle-Earth. The Haradrim. But in the second age, Harad was called Umbar and the people of Umbar hadn't yet taken up with Sauron.
If you wanted a story about black people in Second Age Middle-Earth all you had to do was set it there. Could have been an interesting story, too, fall of an empire (of sorts) and the turn to evil, that's the kind of thing that needs a good scripting team to make work, but when it does work, it works pretty well. And I'm assuming that for a billion dollars Amazon could find a competent scriptwriter somewhere.
But no, what the RoP team were actually after was to colonise and deconstruct classic LotR, because that's the only way in which this makes sense. And just like Johnson's TLJ, the main expectation being subverted is that this would make anything like as much money as they wanted to see.
You also have established movies like Robin Hood with Kevin Kostner (and Morgan Freeman) where a black character from an area of the world, where the show doesn't take place, is part of the main cast.
Nothing would've stopped the RoP team to get 2-3 people from Umbar to be relevant characters. Make something up how they got there (and how they befriended other main characters) and why they are staying. Hell maybe let them have connections back to Umbar and when they need help 4-5 ships from Umbar arrive (with all black crews) to help out in a battle or something.
(I haven't watched RoP, so no clue if that would be viable)
I've been saying this. Tolkien's works had plenty of other races and countries outside of The Middle Of the Earth
But that would require talent, and not taking an active approach at ruining the things you like.